Alex ColonDragon Go! (for iPhone)If you're looking for a voice-recognition assistant for your iPhone, but you don't want to pay for an iPhone 4S with Siri, get the Dragon Go! app. It can do a few things that Siri can't, and it has a near-stellar track record for accuracy.

If you're looking for a voice-recognition assistant for your iPhone, but you don't want to pay for an iPhone 4S with Siri, get the Dragon Go! app. It can do a few things that Siri can't, and it has a near-stellar track record for accuracy.

When Apple announced that the iPhone 4S would come pre-packed with a speech-recognition personal assistant called Siri, some wondered whether they should upgrade to the new model just for this one amazing feature. Siri is only available on the iPhone 4S. But iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod Touch users actually have access to a very impressive alternative: the Dragon Go! iPhone app (free). And in some ways, Dragon Go! actually works better than Sir (which is technically in beta at the time of this writing).

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Dragon Go! is a voice search app from leading speech-recognition software maker Nuance. It can turn your iOS device into your own personal secretary. Tell it to buy Angry Birds, for instance, and it will fetch it from the App Store. Or ask it to find you movie times, and it will put Fandango right on screen for you, with geo-location match to find theaters near you. In its beta release, Siri has very limited abilities to interact with other apps, and that's one reason Dragon Go! is more impressive. It leverages the power of dozens upon dozens of apps and websites, from Open Table for restaurant reservations to YouTube to Twitter. The two big advantages Siri has over Dragon Go! are 1) it speaks back to you, while all of Dragon's interaction happens on screen, and 2) it can tap into some of your pre-installed Apple apps, like Calendar and Contacts. Additionally, Siri is offered in five languages (U.S. English, U.K. English, Australian English, European French, and German), with more reportedly coming in 2012, although it has very limited functionality in all languages except U.S. English. Dragon Go! only supports U.S. English.

Another popular and free voice-recognition app for the iPhone, Vlingo (free, 2.5 stars) doesn't even come close to Dragon Go! in terms of accuracy and the websites and apps it leverages to carry out commands or get you results. Of course, some speech-input is supported in the powerful search apps Bing (free, 4.5 stars) and Google (free, 4 stars), but all they do is search rather than use applicable apps. Dragon Go! is less about speech and more about getting things done using your apps as well as specific websites, and it does it extremely well.

Setup and InterfaceDragon Go! requires iOS 4 or later and some form of network connectivity (3G, Edge, or Wi-Fi). In addition, the app is currently limited to the iPhone 3GS ($49, 4.5 stars), iPhone 4 ($199.99, 4.5 stars), and fourth-gen iPod touch ($229, 5 stars). If your device meets these requirements, just head on over to the App Store for a free download.

On startup, the app takes you through a simple, five-screen tutorial. This is more than enough to give you a basic understanding of how to use the app, but you can always click on the Settings button to learn more advanced commands (more on those later).

The interface itself is almost comically simple. There's a big red button in the center of the screen. Press it, speak you search terms or question or command, then wait a moment for the results (make sure "detect end of speech" is turned on in the settings panel—otherwise you'll have to tap a button to let Dragon know when you're finished talking). The results page has a "Carousel" layout, with seven tabs at the top of the screen that you can scroll through for different kinds of results. For example, the first tab to open when searching for movie times is Fandango, but you could swipe on over to Google if you prefer. Ask Dragon to find "cute dog pictures," though, and Google Images will be the default tab.

There's an additional toolbar at the bottom of the screen that allows you to move back, forward, and reload a tab, or to remove the tab view completely so there's more room to see your search results. There's also a popup toolbar that makes it easy to share a link via SMS, email, Facebook, or Twitter. You can open the link in the Safari Web browser, or copy it to the clipboard.

Using Dragon Go!Dragon Go! offers context-aware speech-driven search, not unlike the Google and Bing search apps. But Nuance's app brings a new design concept, the Carousel, a scrolling range of tabs for major sites where your results come from. The center button is the app's best guess: for example, a search for "Mexican restaurant" brought up the Yelp result in the center button. Nuance uses 180 popular content providers to deliver results, including AccuWeather, Bing, ESPN, Facebook, OpenTable, Pandora, Rotten Tomatoes, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yelp, YouTube, and Yahoo!.

Not only does Dragon Go show Web results, but it can also be used for voice control of standard apps and even some installed apps like Yelp's. You can tell Go, "Driving directions to the nearest ATM" and the map app will open. By contrast, after speaking the same phrase to the Bing and Google search apps, the results were nothing more than links to bank websites and ATM locater sites. (And Google pulled up a couple of ads in addition to the results, leaving room for only one actual link on screen; Bing had no ads.) You can also use Dragon Go! to start playing music either on the iPhone's built-in Music (formerly called iPod, pre-iOS 5) app or in a music app like Pandora.

Once you find the result you want, the app makes it easy to share the link to SMS, email, Facebook, or Twitter, or you can open the link in the iPhone's Safari Web browser or copy it to the phone's clipboard.

Dragon Go! didn't always transcribe our words perfectly: We tried, "Make reservations at Nobu," and it heard, "Make reservations at knob food." But this was the exception. Dragon is mostly spot on. On another restaurant try, we received options of seeing results on a map, with the ability to call a restaurant directly, or to making a reservation through OpenTable.

When we asked for "directions to nearest ATM," Dragon launched the iOS map app. Perfect. Likewise, when we commanded, "Play Boards of Canada," a slick integrated version of the Music app launched showing all the songs by the fabled Scottish electronic lounge duo. Of course, you can also do this using iOS's voice control, but it doesn't work with apps like Spotify, Netflix, and Google+, while Dragon does.

Should You Download Dragon Go!?To be sure, there's no dearth of ways to search on your iPhone or iPod Touch, but Nuance's Dragon Go! really does add a worthwhile option, especially for people whose curiosity has been piqued by Siri, but who don't want to buy a brand new phone just yet. And, even if you do have Siri on an iPhone 4S, you should try Dragon Go! just to see how it compares. Its speech recognition is nearly perfect, and its use of built-in and third-party apps makes the results you get more immediately useful and actionable.

Dragon Go! (for iPhone)

Bottom Line: If you're looking for a voice-recognition assistant for your iPhone, but you don't want to pay for an iPhone 4S with Siri, get the Dragon Go! app. It can do a few things that Siri can't, and it has a near-stellar track record for accuracy.

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About the Author

Alex Colon is the managing editor of PCMag's consumer electronics team. He previously covered mobile technology for PCMag and Gigaom.
Though he does the majority of his reading and writing on various digital displays, Alex still loves to sit down with a good, old-fashioned, paper and ink book in his free time. (Not that there's anything wrong wit... See Full Bio

Michael Muchmore is PC Magazine's lead analyst for software and web applications. A native New Yorker, he has at various times headed up PC Magazine's coverage of Web development, enterprise software, and display technologies. Michael cowrote one of the first overviews of web services for a general audience. Before that he worked on PC Magazine's S... See Full Bio

More From Michael

Jill Duffy is a contributing editor, specializing in productivity apps and software, as well as technologies for health and fitness. She writes the weekly Get Organized column, with tips on how to lead a better digital life. Her first book, Get Organized: How to Clean Up Your Messy Digital Life is available for Kindle, iPad, and other digital forma... See Full Bio

Dragon Go! (for iPhone)

Dragon Go! (for iPhone)

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